If you haven’t tried these pretzels, you really haven’t had a pretzel. (Douglas Brown and Dorian O’Connell)

I probably had a soft pretzel every day during lunch in high school. The cafeteria sold ’em – not “Super Pretzels,” not anything like those horrifying braids of grease called “Auntie Anne’s,” but simple soft pretzels that undoubtedly were made in some suburban Philadelphia bakery, one of dozens, if not more, in the Philadelphia region that made nothing but pretzels. The Pennsylvania town my grandmother’s Mennonite relatives settled, Lititz, has the nation’s first – and still operating – pretzel shop, the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery (my kids even have “diplomas” from the factory; they spent part of an afternoon there, learning to turn wads of dough into salty puzzles of bread). When I return home, my first purchase is usually a soft pretzel in the Philadelphia airport; I always nab a pretzel or two during the visit; and on the trip back to Colorado I get another one at the airport. It would not be unreasonable to describe my trips to Pennsylvania as Glutenpalooza.

So I know my pretzels.

And I had the best pretzel of my life Wednesday night at Bohemian Biergarten, a pleasing and just-opened spot in downtown Boulder.